Collections & Series

Who was Cassandra?

In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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January 09, 2019

I'l get back to the travelogue soon, but wanted to share a few drawings from the past month or so.

Succulents and a bowl of green almonds.

Although I didn't manage to do a lot on the trip, I've been drawing pretty steadily since we returned.

Succulents and Knitting.

Yesterday I ordered a new fountain pen, my first in a long time -- it's a Moon Man M2 eyedropper pen. These are pens with barrels that can be filled with an eyedropper, rather than a cartridge or piston system. I've never had one, and thought it would be worth a try at only $20; other users praise the extra-fine nibs on these pens.

Embroidered purse and desk objects.

My favorite pen for drawing or writing is a now-vintage Shaeffer 580 with a beautiful, responsive gold nib, but I'm becoming reluctant to take it with me when I travel. I've never been completely happy with the Lamy Safari I bought as a low-cost alternative: it's easy to fill and use, but the nib is too stiff for me. And while I'm quite happy with my usual Noodler's Lexington Grey ink, I'm also eyeing some other possibilities from Noodler's range of bulletproof (entirely waterproof and bleedproof) inks: possibly a blue-black ("54th Massachusetts"), and a dark khaki ("El Lawrence").

Two versions: Still life with pomegranate, pears, and orchid.

Finally the Christmas tree made its appearance, the pomegranate got eaten and was replaced by persimmons. It's all really very mundane, I just draw whatever's in front of me.

And, below, one more of the tree in front of the fireplace. Montreal has forbidden wood burning and none of us want to pay for the expensive conversions required for gas, so for now, there will be no chestnuts roasting on this one.

We took the tree down yesterday, and there was a snowfall. Outside, the world is white, and inside it looks pretty bare: midwinter has arrived. It would seem like a good time to do some watercolors, just to put some color into life! But I don't mind the monochromatic, graphic quality of winter. Drawing with pen or charcoal often seems more appropriate now, and I think my mood and vision become more focused in response to the weather and the starkness. We'll have at least three more months of it, so it's important to find a way through that embraces the season.

October 13, 2018

Three weeks ago, I turned 66, and acted on a decision I've been making over the past couple of months: I started painting in oils again.

Even though we have this spacious and light-filled studio here in Montreal, for some reason I stopped working in oils after we moved back in 2006, turning instead to media that were complementary to my newly-established publishing business -- like linocut -- and doing more daily sketching and drawing. When I painted, it tended to be in watercolor or acrylic, or else I worked in pastel or charcoal -- all works on paper that took up less storage space and were odorless. My mother's big easel, made by my dad, has been set up here the entire time, but I haven't used it very much; I tend to work standing up at my large, adjustable drawing table.

In Vermont, I had a small painting studio in a room in the back of our garage; it looked out on the garden and functioned as both studio and a meditation/quiet space for me. I missed that space a lot when we moved here, and it wasn't easy for me to learn to share a big open space with my husband, or to find the concentrated, solitary focus that painting -- so I always thought -- requires. But I've changed over these years; we work here together quite happily now, with the room somewhat divided in half but without barriers or partitions, each quietly doing our own thing.

Oil painting used to be my main medium, and it's what matters to me the most. I'm not sure why -- perhaps I think it has a better chance of lasting, but I think it's mostly because it presents the greatest challenges. Watercolor is notoriously difficult and unforgiving, it's true, and I love it and will always work in it. But for some reason, I've experienced greater highs and deeper lows with oil, and I think that struggle has taught me the most about myself.

Getting back to oils has been in my mind over the past year or so -- a kind of nagging little voice in the back of my head. When we lost our friend and fellow artist, Jenny, at the end of the summer, and I thought about my own upcoming birthday, I realized a decision had already been made, almost without consciously realizing it. Jenny had also worked in many different media over her lifetime, but in recent years she had turned to ceramics and was making fantastic, often whimsical objects and sculptures that were a reflection of her personality and spirit -- and she loved it, she had really found her perfect medium. At the musical wake the day after Jenny's memorial service, I sat on the couch in their apartment, singing and listening to music being played, talking to old friends, while looking at Jenny's ceramics arrayed on a long window shelf, the towers of Manhattan rising behind them. On a perpendicular wall, over the piano, was an oil painting of mine that I gave Jenny and Bill a long time ago, accompanied by one of Jonathan's photographs, and a portrait in oils of Jenny's mother by a well-known New York artist. It made me think. To some extent, my desire to start again in this medium is a way to remember and honor our friend, and acknowledge that time is passing. If not now, when?

Rocks and Cacti at Cefalu. Oil on canvas, 10" x 12". September 2018.

Of course, the decision to start again with something I'd left off more than a decade ago came with some questions. I'm not the same person I was then, and I've changed as an artist too; it's not a resumption, it's more of a new beginning. First off, did it have to be oils? I had bought new acrylics over the past years. Though I'm not a snob about it, acrylics have never completely satisfied me for painting on canvas, and I like using them on paper, but they didn't call to me. I have a lovely French box easel, too, that is portable and folds up into a small space; I took it apart and set it up; my paints were stored in the drawer. I did an inventory of my paints, which were not in great shape or abundance: to my surprise, some old pigments in lead tubes had weathered the intervening years much better than newer paints in aluminum. In the studio, I do have a number of blank canvases: beautiful Belgian linen that I had stretched, covered with rabbit-skin glue, and oil-primed before we ever moved here. I got out a small one, squeezed some oil paint onto a palette, poured some odorless medium into a cup. I took up a brush. With the first stroke came a rush of sensory impressions, followed by strong memories. It felt not just OK, but very good.

View of Cefalu. Oil on canvas, 12" x 10". October 2018.

The second question was, and still is, where do I want to go with it? In the last two weeks I did two small paintings to get back my feel for the medium and how to handle it, and although neither feels like an indication of direction, they were both helpful and I enjoyed doing them. I've been looking at a lot of work in books and online; I've been thinking both about the places we've traveled -- the light in the Mediterranean and in Mexico -- and also about the still lives I've drawn steadily for a long while. I've been doing some color tests; another thing that's changed is that I'm more analytical now and more willing to put in the effort to learn more about my tools. I'm not going to try to force anything, but I have some ideas; we'll see what happens and what grows naturally out of the process of doing. One big change is that I know that whatever I paint now will be greatly supported by all the drawing I've done since 2010. Drawing is always the foundation, even when the work is abstract.

Toward the sea, Agrigento. 9" x 6", charcoal and graphite on toned paper.A just-finished drawing for a new painting.

It makes me happy to be doing this. Painting always feels like a miracle to me, as do all the arts: beginning from blankness and silence, then creating and building something that grows out of what felt empty, but was always actually filled with potential. What could be more hopeful and life-affirming than that? And yet it's so easy to get caught in the destructive and doubting void, particularly now, when the world often feels hopeless and negative, and so many are despairing and angry. I don't want to be like that; I want to work, as long as I'm able, to see and express something better and more beautiful about our world and my small place in it. That's the real decision that was made.

September 10, 2018

I'm trying to finish the images for The Fig and the Orchid, my book about my father-in-law. The drawing above is one of them.

Autumn olive, skull and two brown eggs in a dish. Charcoal on paper, 9" x 12". This was the first drawing, the line drawing was a few days later.

It's been a complicated couple of months. Lots of travel, family visiting, and guests here in Montreal, overlaid with the deep sadness of a close friend's serious illness, and of course the ongoing political nightmare.

Peaches and plums with Jenny's vase. Pen and ink, 9" x 6".

Drawing has been one way I've tried to deal with the sense that the world is teetering as well as my own impotence in the face of it. Getting my body moving has been another helpful practice and resolve; both my husband and I are trying to get as much exercise as we can. I've been playing the piano some, and as of yesterday, our choir season started up again.

A corner of the studio. Pen and ink, 9" x 12".

Reading, as always, is a solace; friends have been stalwart and kind; and I'm grateful every single day for my home here in Canada, where the society and people are, for the most part, still sane. I'll put the drawings in this post, and painting in a subsequent one.

Top of the china cabinet, with a painting of Vermont in winter. Pen and ink, 9" x 6".

August 09, 2018

This has been a really busy summer for me, but not so much in the artwork department. We've been traveling, and hosting guests a fair amount; I'm serving on the search committee for the new music director at the cathedral, which is time-consuming; and then there's the combination of the extreme heat/humidity and the overheated political situation, which have made it hard for a lot of us to focus on creative work. However, I'm making an effort to get back into it, for therapy and solace as much as anything else. When I (re)turn to drawing or painting, I'm always reminded of why I do it, and have done it my whole life: because it is an all-absorbing meditative time, apart from daily thinking and concerns, that gives happiness. It's pretty simple.

Rhodian plate and succulent: after a dinner party. Pen and ink on paper, 6" x 9".

The drawings shown above were done at home, while this watercolor and cut-paper collage was a studio project, one day when I just felt like I had to put some color onto paper, without any prior idea. It's not meant to "be" anything. It started out like this:

and became this:

That particular day, I didn't really care how it came out - what this piece did was break a logjam where I felt like I couldn't make anything, because I was too depressed about the world. Since then, I've felt better, and am back to drawing often, even though I'm still too busy to paint. Sometimes the hardest part is just starting again.

A view of the studio with cat brush. Pen and ink on paper, 12" x 9".

Book press and Jade Ink bottle. Oil pastel on paper, 12" x 12".

Finally, this is an oil pastel I haven't posted here yet -- there's a problem with the colors; if I had used black or dark blue instead of brown and that ugly mauve, I'd be a lot happier with it. But there are things about this piece that I like, and learned from. It may prove to be a stepping-stone to future work.

It's been good to post these here and write about them: it shows me I haven't been as unproductive as I thought, and gets me thinking about where to go next. What about you? How are you doing this summer?

June 13, 2018

This is a picture I started last week. Yesterday I worked on it quite a bit more, and am ready to call it finished.

I'm finding oil pastel to be a strange medium and hard to get used to, but I rather like how it fits somewhere between painting and drawing. The technique is more like drawing, but the result more like painting. These details are a little larger than life-size, so you can see how the creamy, crayon-like pigment functions quite a lot like artist's oil paint. It sits up on the surface, can be applied quite thickly, but also blended with a finger or a rolled paper stomp. You can scratch through it to reveal lower layers, or rough it up with a contrasting color, applied quite lightly and dryly.

These days, I find the news has required concentration on something else, a different world of values, especially for us up in Canada. I must say, I'm not one for being very nationalistic (a common trait up here) but there's nothing like being insulted and threatened to bring us together. Listening to male bullies also makes me want to find refuge in something that's flexible, pliant, under my own control, and has a chance at being beautiful and reflective of a better world.

May 29, 2018

Even though the outdoors is becoming colorful up here at last, I'm still drawing and painting inside -- maybe because the time I tend to sit down to draw is after dinner, after the dishes have been done, when the sun has set. Last night I looked around for something to set up as a still life, and ended up with two pears (I moved one around to play two roles!), the leftovers of a bouquet, and some colorful Mexican Talavera ceramics.

It looked pretty mundane at this point. The question I have to ask, when deciding to add color, is what sort of colors will create a harmonious palette that also conveys a definite feeling, and also, what will be the relationship between the warm and cool colors if both are to be used? Here I decided to focus on the gold and yellows of the pears and the warm red of the flowers, using a golden tone for the table too as a background shape that unifies the picture. These warm colors were set off with blue in the shadows and the rectangular shape (it was actually a green placemat) behind the flowers. The greens also unify the picture, since they appear all over the page. I made the flowers much more orange than they actually were. This reddish-orange needed an echo in the bottom of the vase, and the bright colors of the salt shaker, or else it would have been orphaned at the top of the picture and created an imbalance, drawing the eye upward, when it needs to move around the shapes. And in terms of shapes, it is a picture about roundness and different kinds of curves. Obviously I had drawn the pear on the right incorrectly, and needed to fix that curve - but I knew that once the color went down, it wouldn't matter.

This detail is a little larger than life-size.

Here's a drawing from earlier in the week, when the bouquet of alstroemerias was at its most exuberant. Sometimes, as in this case, a drawing like this ends up leading to something else a few days later because the act of drawing makes me think about the different elements, which almost become "characters" in a play. Some end up getting written out, and others get a featured part. I don't pretend to understand it -- a lot of what happens is subliminal -- but that's part of the weird drama of still life painting and drawing.

And it doesn't need to stop there. A fast, loose, sketchy painting like this could become the basis for an oil or acrylic painting with flatter shapes, and a similar but more closely refined palette.

May 16, 2018

Because we liked the apartment where we were staying so much, I drew the interior more than I had expected to. The furniture, in heavy wood, glass, and leather, was so different from our northern interiors, as were the bright Mexican colors and bold shapes of the plants, vases, lamps and other objects. My eye is always energized by seeing something different, and my spirit too.

And when I'm seeing inspiring art every day, it makes me want to draw. Mexican art often encourages simplicity and the search for form, I find. Even the two-dimensional art feels quite "plastic", and I sense that sculpture, painting, and nature all inform each other, leading to bold, monumental shapes and a minimum of fussiness or elaboration for its own sake. For example, this detail from a fabulous, huge mosaic titled Rio Juchitan (1953-56) by Diego Rivera and assistants in his workshop, now at the Soumaya Museum:

Back at home, here's some fruit in a pedestal bowl:

The food we were buying at the market was inspiring in itself - we always had a bowl of mangoes, bananas, tomatoes and avocados on the counter. And our residency was also changing the space a little too, as we bought flowers and some embroidered textiles and ceramics, and settled into the places where we liked working. J. often worked at the dining table, while I sat on the couch with my knitting, computer, and drawing.

As I filled the pages of my own sketchbook, I was touched by this book in the anthropology museum - written and illustrated by some kindred spirit at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Most of all, I think drawing at the apartment provided a quiet time after the noise, busyness, overcrowded intensity of the metropolis: a way to re-center and come back to myself.

May 11, 2018

I was in the local art store the other day, buying pastel paper, and ended up also buying three oil pastel sticks - a dark blue-green, gold, and purple. It isn't a medium I've used much since I wore out my childhood set of Cray-Pas a very long time ago, but I've been seeing oil pastel work I liked and thought it would be a good experiment. This is the first attempt -- a fast, ten-minute drawing -- and I quite like the refusal of the thick stick to become pointed and fussy; the intense, rich color; the possibilities for thick dark application and for blending.

The same basic set of objects, drawn in pen-and-ink sometimes last year.

In art supplies as in most things we buy, there's a big difference in price and in quality between different brands. Usually the more expensive brands are worth the price, and that seems to be true in this case. The main stick I've used for the drawing here is Sennelier ($4-$5.50/stick, depending on vendor), while the gold is Van Gogh ($1.75-$2.50). The Sennelier is creamy, non granular, and luscious to draw with. The Van Gogh, much drier and more granular, is about the same as the Cray-Pas of my youth: I'd call them student grade. Other types -- and other colors -- may be stickier, or crumblier. A full set of Sennelier oil pastels lists at $539; I've seen discounted prices of $243 - but I'm not interested in a full set at this point, but in acquiring particular colors. I'll be buying more, slowly. They also come in very large sticks, at a commensurately larger price, but those are too big in diameter for what I want to do.

Beginning artists sometimes ask me whether to buy a set of colors of paint or pastels or other media - or to buy open stock. I usually suggest that they buy a set, but of the best quality they can afford. I think we all love sets of colors - there's something about opening a metal lid, or a lovely box, and seeing a whole range of colors nestled inside - maybe it reminds us of those big boxes of Crayola crayons. As a kid, I used to spend hours rearranging my crayons in different ways, which probably foretold more about my future than any Tarot deck. Six colors often isn't enough for someone without experience in color mixing, but a set of twelve colors is usually plenty for someone to get the feel of a medium and decide if they like it, without spending a fortune - because good art supplies are really quite expensive.

Inferior colors, while they may look brilliant and beautiful in the tube or box, are harder to handle and give unpredictable or low-quality results that can easily discourage even the most enthusiastic artist, who may blame herself but shouldn't. The choice isn't all black and white, though. In nearly all media, there's a middle range that is affordable, but not prohibitive. Art stores that cater to university classes are a good place to look, and there are many reviews of art supplies online. In this field, you really do tend to get what you pay for: the top-of-the-line brands are the best, using the finest-ground, best-quality, long-lasting pigments and the best binders and mediums, and sold by companies with long histories of research in the field. The beginner doesn't need to go right to this rarefied top level, but he does need to stay away from the bottom. (Drop me a line if you have a question, I'm always glad to try to help.)

This is my 90-color "landscape" set of Rembrandt dry pastels: I have two drawers full of different pastels, some inherited some bought in sets, some bought individually.

There are several problems with sets for the more advanced or professional artist. One is the need for a greater range of colors, or a different range, from what is provided by the manufacturer in their sets, which may be general assortments, or color ranges specifically selected for landscape, portraits, or still life. Or we may find that we use up certain colors much more quickly than others, and need larger tubes or more sticks. Sometimes I start with a set that matches most closely what I think I'll use, and then augment it. In the case of pastels, that means buying new boxes for storing the ones I buy individually.

And storage of art supplies, in general, is a whole other issue, which I'll talk about sometime soon in another post.

I'm curious to hear from non-professional artists who've bought art supplies -- has it been a good experience? Confusing? Frustrating? Do you feel like you got your money's worth?

May 01, 2018

I was curious whether it would be possible to render such a complicated scene in pen and ink, without washes or color. It's difficult! This was the first state of the drawing. Later I added some white and brown colored pencil to increase the tonal range, and take advantage of the toned paper used for the drawing; I think I like it better as a drawing without, but the white makes it easier to "read" the scene. I'm not sure if the Block Island scene will end up as a painting or print or series of drawings, but I'm glad I did this study.

The real challenge -- and absorbing pleasure -- is to start with a blank page and, an hour or two later, see a depiction of the scene. That's the magic of drawing; it's what attracted me as a child and why I've kept drawing all my life. You're creating something from nothing, only through the work of your eye and your hand. Drawing can be so many things, done in so many styles. Sometimes I like to make a careful detailed study in order to help myself see what's actually there, where the structure and form lie, and so I can later make decisions about what to emphasize or leave out. But there is also genuine pleasure in the act of drawing itself - watching the tool move across the paper, seeing the marks emerge under your hand, feeling the tooth of the paper or its smoothness, watching shapes and forms develop, the unconscious process of making decisions as you work. It makes me angry when I think how many teachers and critics have disparaged students' abilities and their innate love of drawing, often discouraging them forever, and both forced students into particular styles or taken talented students apart for drawing in their own way. (My friend, the illustrator Priya Sebastien has recently written about this in her own life.) Drawing should be about joy and discovery, concentration and pleasure. It should be personal. It's so elemental, too, so fundamentally human - as the earliest cave paintings show us. How can anyone be so arrogant as to say, "this is the right way to draw, this is wrong?" And what harm they do!

Jose Maria Velasco, View of Chiquihuite Hill, watercolor on paper.

I've been inspired recently by looking closely at the work of Jose Maria Velasco (1840-1912) the legendary 19th. C. Mexican landscape painter. His drawings, watercolors and paintings are all marked by careful observation, immaculate draftsmanship, and patience -- while never losing sight of the whole, and as I stood in the gallery, moving closer and further away, what struck me the most was the extraordinary patience it must have taken for him to get it right: not just the details in the drawing, but the tonality, the exact precision of the colors he mixed. Each time I go to Mexico City I visit the National Gallery in order to see these paintings again: they remain fresh, alive, vibrant, and beautiful - even though they are very much in the academic tradition.

Jose Maria Velasco, Mexican landscape and detail, oil.

So many of us have lost that ability to be patient, either with our eyes or with our tools, perhaps because of the premium that has been placed on spontaneity and originality in modern art, and on speed and output in modern life in general. What we forget is that even the great innovators, like Picasso, were also great draftsmen, and they didn't acquire the skill to innovate, play, invent, and adapt without learning to see, and to draw extremely well. Patient, careful observation is the foundation of the most memorable art, from the great masters to Lucien Freud. You have to see first, and drawing is a way to see fully. To do that, you have to settle down for a while, a good long while, and put in the time. Then you can let it go into abstraction, allow your emotional response to dominate -- whatever is right for you at that time, with that subject. But if you don't know what an eye, or a fish, or a particular rock looks like to begin with, how are you ever going to capture its essence, let alone distort it at will?

Jose Maria Velasco, Rocks, oil study.

I say this because patience has always been a problem for me, in art, in practicing the piano, in slowing down enough to read carefully. I absolutely refused to play scales or etudes on the piano or flute, and my technique has always been weak as a result. In other areas, calligraphy for instance, I was willing to write pages and pages of examples. Some of the problem is just my impatient nature, my tendency to get bored, and an innate ability to "get by" on less-than-full attention. Some of it is the preference for expressive brushwork or an energetic line -- or sight-reading a new piece of music. Some of it is restlessness: the internal desire to move on to the next thing when the first one isn't finished. At the same time, I'm capable of being very attentive and patient when I remember to be, or when I insist on it for myself. I'm always glad when I give myself an exercise in slowing down, because I always learn something valuable and notice things I'd otherwise miss. Drawing is the back-to-basics practice that is the foundation for everything else. My friends who are professional orchestra players still practice every day; I need to draw every day too.

Vincent Van Gogh, A Fishing Boat at Sea, pen and ink, 1888.

The sketchbooks of great draftsmen are always inspiring - I think of Turner, Whistler, Van Gogh, Sargent, Winslow Homer. Because they were working more quickly than in the studio, their drawings often contain an energy, embodied in the line or the brushstroke, that is as palpable as the wind. Yet, they had the skill, honed by years of practice, to use every minute well, through patient concentration, and I don't think they saw their studies as "lesser" works. Sargent, who made his living from society portraits, once said that his true legacy would be his watercolors, and that is proving to be the case. Van Gogh's drawings of landscapes, trees, and gardens are every bit as moving to me as his paintings. And when I stand in a museum in front of one of these drawings or watercolor studies, I also feel myself, and my connection with all the other artists who have also faced a scene and the next blank page.

April 26, 2018

We rented an apartment in Mexico City, in the same general area (Condesa/Roma) we've stayed in recently, but a bit closer to Chapultepec Park, metro and metrobus stations, and the major streets of Paseo de la Reforma and Insugentes Sur. It turned out to be an excellent fit for us, with a well-equipped kitchen, good appliances, a comfortable bed and living room, lots of storage, a washing machine, a balcony, and 24-hour security.

Looking northwest from our balcony, toward Reforma.

But one of its best aspects was its height: we were on the 8th floor of a 14-story building, with access to the roof, good views to the west of the city and Chapultepec castle, the flight path of airplanes coming into Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez, and the dramatic thunderstorms that moved eastward across the mountains into the city on a number of late afternoons. We spent way more time than we'd anticipated in this aerie, just watching and looking and listening, whether it was the life on the streets and rooftops below or helicopters landing on pads on top of the skyscrapers on Reforma.

Street vendors below a date palm.

Mexico City's official color is hot pink, and so are its taxis.

Nighttime on a beautiful, clear evening - usually the pollution got worse during the day and then sometimes cleared out at night.

It was interesting and disturbing to see the differences in pollution and atmospheric conditions each day -- sometimes we could see the mountains, but more often not. We only went up on the roof once, on the afternoon we arrived, which turned out to be one of the clearest days of the sixteen we were there. More often, it was like the photo below.

I sketched the urban landscapes from our windows: not my usual subject, but the view and its endless details compelled me to try. Here's a pen-and-ink version:

And one with added watercolor and gouache:

The first drawing engendered this exchange on Instagram:

Me: I had fun doing this but it's also kind of exhausting!XB: I can imagine it, hard to keep chaos and balance all together.Me: Yes, it's just a lot of stuff, and easy to get confused where you are, while trying to keep a general sense of balance through the whole scene. What to leave out, what to leave in. And, of course, perspective. I don't use lines but try to be fairly accurate by eye, and mistakes always happen!XB: mistakes are... beautiful